Today’s citizenship: when Westerners can no longer be ‘left alone’

By now, almost everyone living in the West has noticed that the state is interfering in private life, whether it be health, education or property rights.

Some people with tunnel vision on a pet cause — smoker’s liberties — do not realise that that is but one small part of a larger plan to redefine citizenship in the 21st century. I recently read a comment from a smoker expressing surprise that an overarching communitarian umbrella exists — the UN’s Agenda 21 — to regulate what people do in their everyday life, whether at home or in the world: ‘Oh, and I’d thought it was just about smoking’.

No.

Returning to Invisible Serfs Collar (see ‘UK libertarian and other sites of interest’ near the bottom of my blogroll), already explored here and here, we discover that citizenship is now intended to encompass various ‘duties and responsibilities’ which go much further than valuing life as a free man, earning a living, paying taxes and being a good neighbour.

Chances are, wherever you live in the Western world, that you or younger members of your family are being primed through today’s education system to view citizenship as part of a larger global agenda of subservience to the state via UN mandates.

A sought profound rewriting of the 14th Amendment to turn the nature of the US Constitution upside-down [is intended]. Starting with the need for national education standards. But why that exactly?

… There is a desire to create a view of national citizenship not as the source of evenhanded protection against an overbearing state but as the generator of citizenship obligations and duties and responsibilities. All of these words get used over and over again in reference to this new view of education for citizenship. There is no longer be a right to be left alone. This is not only true in US but in the descriptions from all over the world. Education is being seen as the means for creating the Values and Attitudes, the real common core, that recognizes a personal and collective responsibility towards solidarity with others to achieve social justice, understanding and cooperation amongst peoples” …

And because perceptions can trump reality, if you teach students this altered definition of Citizenship and obligation for the Common Good and demerits for acts of individuality, and then gather data to enforce this Image of the Perfect Collectivist Citizen Drone for the 21st Century, you can create her. Regardless of the language and historical intent of the Constitution. I have seen the College Board’s revisions of their AP history courses. No one is likely to be learning the truth about the Constitution in an American classroom for very much longer.

History shows that self-interest always exists and only free markets channel it in beneficial ways. A government employee with the ability to enforce an education edict that insists that “community means working collectively and collaboratively with others toward a shared vision” still has a self-interest they will try to maximize. That will likely involve pushing this sought mandate to get a raise or promotion no matter how bad the results for students and taxpayers.

Everything that has been a barrier in the past to the Overbearing State is being dismantled. At the exact same time the countries that have social democracy/welfare state for all have found it to be unsustainable. All those realities are being ignored though by politicians and Connected Businesses wanting to preserve power and economically unsophisticated voters and students wanting free stuff at someone else’s expense.

I am not going to tell you we need to stop this before it goes airborne. That really happened in the 90s as Outcomes Based Education. I am just hoping to create enough alarm before we get to the May Not Turn Around part of the Trip.

We have always had obligations and responsibilities as citizens, but they have largely been private ones emerging from moral rectitude that our elders passed down to us through the generations. Until recently, this was via home, church and school where adults were ‘on the same page’ and transmitted consistent messages about not disgracing ourselves, our families, our neighbours or the towns and cities where we live. We were taught to understand and value our own nation’s history, especially to learn from past mistakes (e.g. wars). Education was the boat to lift all to an equal opportunity — not an equal outcome. We also learned practical skills to benefit our families (i.e. woodworking, cooking) which also served some of us well in the workplace.

However, we were never taught that we were to become servants of the state. In fact, we learned that our elected officials and public sector employees were there to serve us. Now these officials and civil servants wish to control us when, strangely, we are the ones paying their salaries via taxation.

To undo this will require returning to the days of yore when parents will have to spend private time away from the television and other amusements to teach children history, logical thinking and practical skills. We can no longer leave this to the schools.

As for the elderly in society and the push to get them enrolled in Forever Learning-type programmes, pensioners should ask themselves why they need to return to the classroom and why they need to learn ‘new skills’. Are they also being reprogrammed into becoming new citizens within a UN framework?

In closing, I suspect that Robin pointed to the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution primarily for its conferring the Bill of Rights on American citizens (see Incorporation). It still has primacy for Americans over the UN Charter although, worryingly, the lines seem to be more blurred in this area by the year.

There you have the incentive of Government officials for using education for merely [creating] Competent, Mentally Hobbled Citizens. Especially ones who are being bred to see a Duty to the State. And the Business Angle. They are politically connected and want special privileges and protections from their Cronies. That’s not Capitalism though. It’s Mercantilism where there is no mass prosperity. It is what Adam Smith rejected as he accounted for Britain’s phenomenal 18th century economic growth.

Nice to hear from you, Curmudgeon — and welcome! Agree wholeheartedly, however, it was a rather unlikely reader of theirs who wrote this on another blog of the same genre a few weeks ago. I thought he knew better.

I very much enjoy reading your site and greatly lament the massive pub closures since 2007. Am also grateful that you are not fully pro-CAMRA. IMHO, they have some explaining to do in their denial of the commercial effects of the smoking ban. It’s only too tempting to suggest that they wash their beards once in a while instead. (Okay, there, I’ve said it. ;) )